A Microfluidic Aptamer-Based Sensor for Detection of Mercury(II) and Lead(II) Ions in Water

Heavy metal contaminants have serious consequences for the environment and human health. Consequently, effective methods for detecting their presence, particularly in water and food, are urgently required. Accordingly, the present study proposes a sensor capable of detecting mercury Hg(II) and lead Pb(II) ions simultaneously, using graphene oxide (GO) as a quenching agent and an aptamer solution as a reagent. In the proposed device, the aptamer sequences are labeled by FAM and HEX fluorescent dyes, respectively, and are mixed well with 500 ppm GO solution before injection into one inlet of the microchannel, and the heavy metal sample solution is injected into another inlet. The presence of Hg(II) and Pb(II) ions is then detected by measuring the change in the fluorescence intensity of the GO/aptamer suspension as the aptamer molecules undergo fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). The selectivity of these two ions is also shown to be clear among other mixed heavy metal ions. The experimental results show that the aptamer sensors have a linear range of 10~250 nM (i.e., 2.0~50 ppb) for Hg(II) ions and 10~100 nM (i.e., 2.1~20.7 ppb) for Pb(II) ions. Furthermore, the limit of detection is around 0.70 ppb and 0.53 ppb for Hg(II) and Pb(II), respectively, which is lower than the maximum limits of 6 ppb and 10 ppb prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for Hg(II) and Pb(II) in drinking water, respectively.

Direct Synthesis of Titanium Nanoparticles by Induction Flow Levitation Technique

The paper considers the technology of obtaining metal nanoparticles by the method of induction levitation. A bulk metal sample of titanium with a purity of 99.9% and a mass of 0.4 g, which was heated and held in a state of flux levitation by a high-frequency electromagnetic field, was used as the basic raw material for nanoparticles. The obtained nanoparticles were examined using Х-ray diffraction analysis to determine the purity of the product. The analysis showed that it is high. Particle size distribution was investigated using dynamic light scattering, where the average particle diameter is 55 and 47 nm, obtained in Ar and He, respectively. The morphology was studied using scanning electron microscopy, according to which the average diameter of the particles synthesized with He and Ar is 45 and 57 nm, respectively.

The Cold Rolling Effects on the Microstructure and Micro-Hardness of Al-Mg-Si Alloy

Rolling is a very common technique for shaping sheet metal. It aims to reduce the thickness of a metal sample to adapt it to the usual conditions of use in the industry. Nevertheless, this technique is not without modifying the mechanical and microstructural properties of the materials that can influence the mechanical strength of shaped parts. The purpose of the present investigation is to study the changes in microstructures and micro-hardness of Al-Mg-Si alloy with different rolling reduction in thickness and following artificial aging treatments at 175° C . We notice that the micro-hardness increases with the increasing of the deformation level . Reduction in thickness shows a change in microstructure and texture. Characterization methods used in this work is: Optical Microscopy (OM) and, Vickers microhardness.

Influence of fastening conditions on the deformation of a metal sample when it is stretched

Investigates the effect of conditions for fixing a metal thin plate on its deformation under tension. At observance of GOST on fixing the edges of the plate in a tearing machine, the greatest thinning occurs in the middle along the length of the sheet.

Development and validation of an inverse method for identification of thermal characteristics of a short laser pulse

The paper presents development and validation of an inverse method for the identification of thermal characteristics of a short single laser pulse which stroke in a metal sample. The inverse method was applied to find unknown power of the laser pulse, the dimensionless shape parameter of the super-Gaussian function which describes the beam spatial profile as well as beginning and end times of the exposition of the metal sample to the laser pulse. The proposed inverse algorithm was based on the Levenberg-Marquardt technique as well as on temporal and spatial distributions of temperature on the rear surface of the sample, i.e., the opposite to the irradiated one, measured using the experimental stand. The performed investigations showed that the problem was ill-posed but good accuracy was obtained. The low sensitivity of registered temperature to changes in both power and duration of the pulse affected the retrieving accuracy most significantly. Moreover, the dependence of solution of the inverse problem on the initial guess was observed. The accuracy was also affected by low temporal resolution (500 Hz, with the exposure time from 0.2 to 1 ms) of the IR camera. This resolution affected the temporal sampling of measured temperatures. Despite these problems, the method was able to retrieve unknown pulse parameters with 20-25% accuracy.